Orange-Strawberry Quiche

Have you ever had a dessert quiche?  I hadn't until Talia invented one.  We were talking about healthful options for her class project and she suggested this one - entirely her own invention.  I was pretty impressed with the creativity, and entirely unsure how we would go about making such a thing, but serendipity showed up and voila:

It's a pretty basic little quiche, with strawberries as the filling.  Just after she'd first suggested this combination, we were at the grocery store and saw a tart recipe with an orange custard filling.  Borrowing from that idea, we added orange zest to the cream, heated it a bit and added it to the filling.

The recipe, as with most first tries, is not yet ready for prime-time, but there was quite a deal of pride in preparing this dessert for her grandparents.  Confession?  I was not really sure this would be good.  But it was.  We'll probably try it again soon, with a slightly sweeter crust and see what comes of it.

Here's to invention: the necessary ingredient.

Coconut Chicken Strips with Orange-Endive Salad

I have a terrible tendency to mess with recipes - it's a meddlesome quality that sometimes results in a good twist and sometimes....I learn why the recipe said to do such-and-such. 

With this chicken dish, we learned that there is such a thing as taking it too easy on the oil!  Lucky for us, the results were edible, just not golden.  You'll see what I mean in the photo below.

We started with some buttermilk - soaked the chicken strips (about 1 lb of chicken breasts, cut into thin strips) for about 30 minutes, then dredged them in a mix of 1 cup panko, 1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened!) and 1 tsp of chili powder.

Now, we've already made some modifications to the original recipe I was inspired by, but here's where I went wrong: I didn't use enough oil in the pan.  The recipe said 3 TB of oil.  I thought I could get by with a large non-stick pan and some canola oil spray.   As the chicken strips cooked, the outer edges of the coconut got very cooked, nearly burning, but the panko crumbs didn't brown at all.  In an effort to lighten the dish, we ended up with some visually unappealing chicken.  When we used a little oil, they looked great.

For the next batch, I used 3 TB of oil in the pan and amazingly enough, they browned.  There are times when I get too impatient and try to cut corners.  Then there are times when I learn the hard way why certain formulas appear over and over in our cookbooks.  Putting some oil in the pan seems like a pretty basic one, hum?

At any rate, we served the chicken strips with some carrots (microwaved and seasoned with a little salt and pepper) and an orange-endive salad.  The endive was just chopped, raw, and tossed with lettuce and segments of a blood orange.  The dressing was a store-bought vinagrette and the contrast between the slightly sweet chicken and the tangy, citrus of the salad was excellent.

The kids love dredging and coating things for the stove top, and I love an experiment, so it was a successful dinner all in all.

Almond-Orange Tart - French Fridays with Dorie

This tart's unusual combination of orange segments and almond cream filling was delicious.  It helped that we had the tart last weekend, so we could anticipate some of the steps that required time (letting the orange segments dry on paper towels in the fridge, for instance) but it wasn't an overly complicated dessert and well worth the effort.  

The crust was a traditional pate sucre, made in the food processor and chilled, and the almond cream was also processed and chilled.  The only minor trouble we had was finding almond flour - it wasn't available at either of the grocery stores we went to this week, so we made our own by grinding whole almonds until they were flour-like.  I suspect our filling had more texture than intended, but it was wonderful.

Once everything had been chilled and assembled, the tart took about 40 minutes to bake.  It was heavenly.  The almond filling browned and developed a slight crunch between the orange segments, which remained meaty and flavorful.  A dash of powdered sugar was all it needed.

We're already planning some variations on this one - cherries or apricots, anyone?

Recipe can be found in "Around my French Table" by Dorie Greenspan.  See also: French Fridays with Dorie